Q 01/05

In which Mississippi town was Faulkner born in 1897?

A) New Albany

B) Tupelo

C) Jackson

D) Natchez

Answer · why

A) New Albany

The family moved to Oxford in 1902 when he was four, and he lived there most of his life.

Q 02/05

Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County is a stand-in for which real Mississippi county?

A) Yalobusha

B) Panola

C) Lafayette

D) Marshall

Answer · why

C) Lafayette

He called it his apocryphal county; its seat, Jefferson, is a renamed Oxford.

Q 03/05

In what year was Faulkner awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature?

A) 1936

B) 1949

C) 1954

D) 1962

Answer · why

B) 1949

It was actually presented at the 1950 banquet alongside Bertrand Russell's prize.

Q 04/05

Which two Faulkner novels won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?

A) The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying

B) Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses

C) Light in August and Sanctuary

D) A Fable and The Reivers

Answer · why

D) A Fable and The Reivers

He is one of only four authors to win the fiction Pulitzer more than once.

Q 05/05

How did William Clark Falkner, Faulkner's great-grandfather and a Confederate colonel, die?

A) Murdered by a business partner

B) In a railroad crash

C) Of yellow fever in an epidemic

D) Shot in a duel of honour

Answer · why

A) Murdered by a business partner

He had been tried and acquitted twice on murder charges himself.